Obviously, the highlight of the conversation during John Calipari’s press conference with the media was perimeter defense. Kentucky allowed Miami (OH) to knock down 15 on Monday and SHSU 18 on Thursday. It is a concern.

“The first thing I am going to do is contact the rules committee and ask them to move the line back, joked Calipari. This may be the worst defensive team I’ve had since 1998. We need to be the best if we want to be what everyone wants us to be. We have no sense of urgency out there.”

There should have been urgency as Sam Houston’s Corey Allmond was unconsious all night. The senior guard knocked down 11 3’s, a career-high for him and a Rupp Arena record. He had eight in the first half, which tied his career-high in a game and he also went to the break one point shy of a career-high with 24.

Calipari continued to discuss their defensive woes and contributed a lot of it to them leaking out guys on shot attempts and their inability to fight through screens, but mostly he said was lack of concentration and simple talking.

“We continuously get hung up on screens because nobody talks. Ramon (Harris) is the only one who talks on defense. They leaked guys out alot and somebody would get back with him but it wouldn’t be there guy. Then they would take the dribbler and leave Allmond. We have to talk on defense.”

“We are not playing winning basketball and it is going to catch us. It could happen on Saturday (against Rider). Rider is a better shooting team than the team you saw tonight. Miami had 15, they (SHSU) had 18, who knows Rider could knock down 20.”

He then talked about his starters playings so many minutes.

“I played five guys way too many minutes tonight. In a perfect world we go up by 25 and I can get guys in there. But, we would go up 15 or 17 and make stupid mistakes and they would come down and hit a three. We couldn’t pull away, didn’t have that killer instinct. They are definitely going to be tired on Saturday. Can I even practice tomorrow? Am I going to run these guys out there for three hours?”

He finished by mentioning that he is starting three freshman, a sophomore and a junior and is simply playing a lot of young guys who don’t really know what they are doing.

“We have to stay and play entire possessions on defense. Teams runs their offense and they finish it with an action. We have to be ready for that action, when teams are attempting to score. We are not ready for that action when it occurs.”

“I love my team. We are young and we don’t understand a lot of defense, but I love my team. We have a chance to be really good. But, we also have a chance to be really bad. We need to take pride in defense. We need to talk. We need leaders to step up and make it known how important defense is. We have to do it together. We will get better.”

Sam Houston Head Coach Bob Marlin

Marlin started his presser by saying, “(DeMarcus) Cousins was nasty inside.”

Yeah, he was.

He said they went into the game with a plan to shoot from deep and then when Allmond caught fire they just continued to find ways to get him the ball.

“We knew they gave up 15 threes in their first game. With the length that they have underneath and their closing speed, we obviously knew that we would have to shoot well from deep to be competitive. We ran stuff geared to the perimeter.”

When asked about Allmond’s performance and if he has been on fire like that before.

“Well, Allmond is a junior-college player. Last year in his first game he had eight three and 24 points in the first half. He can shoot it and has definitely been in the grove like that before. He was 13th or 14th in the country last year in shooting the three and finished with 99 threes on 44-percent shooting. We wanted to get him to 100 threes and 50-percent. He even makes those double-clutch threes all the time in practice.”